Modern Cosmology

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By John Mundy, PhD

 

       According to the cosmologists, there is something holding the visible universe together and it’s not just gravity. Gravity works within our own and other planetary and galactic systems but it is not a sufficient force to explain why the Universe is not literally flying apart. Something is keeping everything together. The physical universe, what we call “atoms” makes up 4% of the universe. Another 21% is made up of dark matter. Although Dark Matter is not observable, scientists know that galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and the universe as a whole contain far more matter than that which interacts with electromagnetic radiation and can therefore be seen.

The remaining 75% of the universe is made up of what cosmologists call Dark Energy. No one is quite sure what dark energy is. There is, however, some kind of force acting in opposition to gravity which holds everything together even though the Universe is expanding. Why don’t we call this thing which has no form which has no dimension and cannot be measured – Mind? We might also call it Love, for like Mind, Love has no form, no dimension and it too cannot be measured. A mystic is someone who goes beyond physics and studies metaphysics. The question then is, how do things work on the level of mind?

Nothing matters except insofar as we, our minds, make something “matter” by bringing it into form physically or mentally. When distinctions created by our minds are taken to be real — especially the distinction between "subject" and "object," "I" and "other," "self" and "world," "we" and "they" — we lose sight of reality’s wholeness and fall into an illusion of separation. This imagined separation is the cause of suffering.

  The mystic strives for a higher vantage point, a realm wherein there is no separation, and time stops. From this perspective, there is no judgment of the world, and there are no problems. We may continue to act in the world but we need not “worry” about the world because we are driven by the instinct of spirit. The activity of Spirit is eternal; the activity of the ego is limited and destined to end in time. In so far as we find this world a confining place, we live in hell. When we are able to experience the unbounded vastness of Spirit, we find Heaven. We can then “reflect” Heaven here in our daily, ordinary lives.

 The mind is its own place, and it can make

 a hell out of heaven or a heaven out of hell

John Milton Paradise Lost

 

        There are many states of being, none of which are physical. Love is real and Love does not have a form. Eternity does not have a form. God does not have a form. Truth does not have a form. All there is, is Life but Life does not need a form. The body is ephemeral. To say that life is eternal does not mean that we go from one body to another. That is actually a limiting idea. Who wants to go from story to story to story, from soap opera to soap opera?

        How many millions of people believe in reincarnation? It is a belief not a reality. Think of how many millions of Christians believe Jesus suffered, died, and bled for our “sins.” Yet, the idea of vicarious salvation is also a belief. Jesus willingly went to the cross to show us there is no such thing as death, not to atone for our sins. Ernest Holmes, founder of the Science of Mind, did not believe in reincarnation. As he expressed it.

I am certain that people pass from this world to the next. . .

except that they are no longer using the physical body.

I do not believe that people return to this world by way of reincarnation.

 

Either something is true or it is not true. When the Course says that reincarnation cannot be true, we should take it to mean what it says. The Course also says, What conceals the truth is not whereyou should look to find the truth. The dissolution of the body is simply the quiet laying down ofthebody and the transformation from a dream of death to an awareness of Life. Only the body disappears and the body doesn't have anything to do with who we are in eternity. There is no deathbecause all there is, is Life and what is all encompassing can have no opposite. God is all encompassing. There is no opposite to God. God is our source and our Home and place of rest.
 

  When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone,

you will know that you will last forever.

Perhaps you think this is accomplished through death, but nothing is accomplished through death, because death is nothing. Everything is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the mind.

The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who are life.

A Course in Miracles

 

Anything which rusts, or rots or decays or is turning from one form back into another form is not permanent and therefore not eternal. Only the mind, only Spirit is eternal. There is a line in Martin Luther's hymn, A Mighty Fortress, which says, The Body They May Kill, God's Truth Abideth Still. His Kingdom is Forever.

 

 The ancient Greeks used to have a saying -- "soma sema'' -- "the body is a tomb.'' The body is the ego's chosen home. It is also its prison. The message of the mystic is that we have nothing to lose. To lose a body is just to lose a body. Death of the body is not the end. It's not the beginning. It is a continuing. Krishnamurti says death is no big deal. It is birth into this world we should be concerned about.
 

 If the story of the wandering Jew be true,

indeed if there was a man who could not die,

would he not be the unhappiest of men?

Soren Kierkegaard

 

Those who die before they die.

Don’t die when they die.